Synners (14 page)

The kid took quite a lot of that before he said the secret words:
state's
evidence.
But the weirdest part was that Rivera looked even more relieved than the kid, and he flashed on the idea that the kid thought Rivera was going to solve all his problems when really what it was, was the kid had just solved Rivera's and didn't even know it.

So they'd given the kid a bunch of official-looking stuff to thumbprint and made him look into one of those retina-printing scopes. Some more talk, some more phone calls, and then, when he'd thought everything was all over and they could all go home, off they all went to night court. He hadn't really believed they were going there until they'd pulled up at the front steps, and he still hadn't believed it until they all started to climb them.

That was when the kid got balky. Something about copies? He couldn't remember. And then the courtroom—

He'd had a bad moment right then, just before they'd all gone in. He'd started thinking that he was going to run straight into Gina, busted at a hitand-run or just toxed and disorderly or something. He'd see her, and she'd see him with Galen and Joslin, and boom, nuclear meltdown.

What she'd do when she found out about the deal he'd agreed to—fuck the meltdown, it would be stone-home apocalyptic.
Jesus
is
coming after
all, fucker, but just for you!

But they'd promised they'd bring her in on it, too, before they opened it up to everyone. She'd go with him, and it would be like it was theirs, together, and that would be good. But she was going to meltdown bad when she found out he'd kept stuff from her, she'd kick his ass just on general principle. In twenty years they hadn't kept any secrets from each other. Then again, he hadn't had any secrets to keep. And then
again,
he'd never been able to imagine having any to keep where Gina was concerned. Until now.

Sorry, Gina.

He wondered if he'd be able to get out even that poor little two-word apology before she nuked him.

Well, like the man had said they would, the times had definitely achanged, and that made him feel sad beyond the usual morning-after funk.

No,
two
mornings after. Where did the second day go?

Oh, Christ, yes—they'd detoxed him the quick way. Rivera had taken him to a doctor in . . . no, the doctor had come here, to the penthouse, and she'd given him Purge. She hadn't called it Purge, but that was what it had been. He'd had Purge before, and once you'd had it, you didn't forget it. Purge always put a lot of miles on your odometer before it was through with you, and maybe it took a few years off your life and maybe it didn't, but it sure felt like it did. With Diversifications in the person of Rivera picking up the tab. A little trade-off, there— a good life, but a shorter one.
Ars longa,
vita
fucking
brevis.

Fuck it all. He'd just lie here now and watch the pictures. The video show that ran endlessly in his head was coming up to where he could see it better—that, or he was going down to where it was, it didn't matter to him one way or the other. Just as long as he could see it.

The lake, again; the lake with the stony shore. It showed up somewhere in all his videos now, and he didn't know what that meant, but he didn't question it. The pictures ran the way they would, and he was just the medium—

—synner—

—all right, synner, now he could believe in that word beyond its genesis as the Beater's PR device—it could have been worse, the Beater could have dragged out that old chestnut,
cyberwhatsis,
or whatever it was, he couldn't remember, and he didn't have to, because he was standing on the lake with the stony shore, a million-million stones worn smooth as eggs by the lapping of the water, and every stone a secret world to blossom at his touch.

Be careful.

A whisper that came through the music, but whether as part of it or something separate from somewhere else in his mind, he didn't know.

He could feel the stones hard against his bare feet as he made his way unsteadily along the arc of the shore. The sun was high overhead, falling hard on the water like a demand.

Be careful.

He was teetering on one foot, and the sun was demanding that the lake do something, allow something of it. . . .

The stones shifted beneath him, and he felt himself twisting around as he lost his balance. Sky and ground seemed to nod and sway, and he went down, under the glaring demand of the sun.

Water touched his fingertips in a feather-kiss, and his hand closed around a stone.

Be careful. Can you cast this stone?

He brought the stone up close to his face. It was almost bone white, pockmarked and shot through with spidery veins of silver gray. The texture shifted in his sight, and the hard, demanding sun struck a tiny, white-hot spark in it. On the lake a ripple broke the mirror-smooth surface and sent an echoing spark, briefly blinding him. Or was it still the stone he was looking at, or both stone and lake at once . . . ?

The texture of the stone shifted again; something seemed to part, like water, like veils, and he was looking
into
the stone, his sight traveling toward the heart of the secret—

The surface of the lake rippled again; more flashes of light, brighter, to the point of pain, hot needles driving into his head, needles the size of spears, needles of light and oh God if that was what this stone meant, he wanted to get out, get out get away get away

Be . . . careful. . . .

And then he
was
out, floating away more weightless than weightless, consisting of less than the empty space between his dreams, as if everything that was himself had been distilled down to one pure thought.

It felt right; it felt more than right, something he'd been meant to do all his life.

The bone white was a bed; he was looking down at himself lying in it, and the sight was receding like a tiny image at the wrong end of the telescope.

Stop.

The movement stopped, and he had a sense of waiting.

Rippling on the lake disturbed the air, and he felt how the air pressed up, parted around him; the movement of the kid in the next bedroom turning fitfully in his own bed, tangled in the sheets and in a situation of his own making.

Jones,
the kid had said at one point. Aloud? Had to be, he remembered the kid babbling to him when they'd been alone once.
Jones.
Jones was dead. No, Jones
wasn't
dead. No, Jones
was
dead, but only sometimes. Schrodinger's Jones. What was Schrodinger's Jones? Putting cats in boxes with vials of poison gas; strange habit. No stranger than Schrodinger's video, though, the one he kept making over and over because he couldn't seem to get it right, and it wouldn't leave him alone until he did, and the Beater couldn't understand, which was why he was on this deal with Galen and Joslin. That was supposed to fix Schrodinger's video. Maybe it would also do something about Schrodinger's dick, which he also suffered with from time to time. It was a stone-home Schrodinger world, when you came right down to it.

He could feel the stone against his hands, the smooth-rough surface surrounding him as he surrounded it, but his body was still far, far away, sprawled on the bed like a cast-off exo. On the bed, floating on the lake, ripples striking sparks all around, secret world in the stone, and no mark to point the way home—

There was a stranger on the stony shore, turning slowly, turning slowly to him, turning like the seasons, like the moon, and he was afraid to see what face the stranger would show him this time, what face, what face, turning from the darkness, what face face

Gina. Relief shuddered through him. This time, Gina. It was like seeing her clearly for the first time in a long time, as if he'd been looking at her through layers and layers of veils or fog or something. Twenty years would build up a lot of layers. He had almost forgotten she was beautiful to him.

She had the greatest color of skin, all her own, a gift of nature, though he'd seen the same shade in various dye-joints around town, tagged "Wild Forest Hardwood." She'd never been much of a peacock type, it never seemed that important lo her, she had other stuff to do. Dreadlocks pretty much took care of themselves, he guessed; they spilled down her forehead, past her ears, onto her shoulders, down her back in fluid, thickly graceful lines. Strong features, extraordinary eyes. No one else in the world looked like her, better now than twenty years ago when she'd first appeared with her laptop and a homemade simulation, crazy to make videos. Not more than sixteen or seventeen then, couldn't have been, but he didn't know. All this time and he'd never gotten around to saying,
How old are you?

She knew how old he was. He could see it in her face, still turning through the light and her gaze sweeping across him, she knew how old he was, she knew—She knew.

That was in her face as well, and he could see it clearly now, what he had not seen at the time when he had been standing on the courthouse steps while Galen and Joslin danced around the kid (because they
didn't
know), trying to draw him into the rhythm and the pattern, meaning to strangle him with it, while he stood there and watched, and the sight that had passed into him without his noticing and buried itself in his brain showed itself to him now, the shadow in the deeper shadows, watching from hiding. Some stray little bit of light had found her and ignited itself in her eyes. Now he saw the glint he had not seen then, felt the way her breathing had sent ripples across the lake.

Gina, I'm sorry.

And she was turning from him, and he saw himself again sprawled on the shifting texture of the bed and knew that it was time to go back. If he was going back.

This was the part of Schrodinger's video that he could never be sure of. Every other time he had gone back, but this might be the time he didn't, this time.

Be careful.

Teetering, about to fall, he could fall either way—

He was lying facedown on the floor, one cheek pressed against the carpet and the afterimages of bright sparks fading in his vision. The fingers of his left hand were curled clawlike around a piece of air the shape of a goodsized stone.

Weird stone fucking shit, he thought, using the bed to help himself up. Have some fucking stone-home crazy dreams and then fall out of bed. With a fucking Purge headache, too. Christ, if they ever did that to him again, he'd take a walk and keep walking, over hill, over dale, over the fucking ocean, he didn't care if they had the stone-home Secret of the Universe in a chocolate candy-fucking-coating, no more fucking Purge,
the-fucking-end.

He found his clothes wadded up in a fat, overstuffed chair and dressed slowly, smoothing away the wrinkles with his hand and wondering if he should be concerned about a change of underwear. Diversifications was a pretty detox/safe-sex kind of outfit. If it hadn't been for Joslin's big-deal project, he was pretty sure Diversifications wouldn't have wanted any part of him, or Gina either.

The memory of Gina was like a physical blow. It caught him off balance with one leg in his pants. He staggered across the room, and for a moment he saw the stony shore in the velour smooth of the carpet before he fell sideways onto the bed.

He lay with the breath knocked out of him, more by surprise than by the fall. She
had
been there, and he'd been too toxed to register the sight of her then, but his brain had saved her for later, for the lake with the stony shore.

Sitting up, he pushed the pants down his leg with his other foot, stamped them into a wad, and tossed them over on the chair again. "Did it wrong," he muttered. He had to be carefu about that these days, doing things wrong, because wheneve he did, he found himself toppling over onto that shore of egg-smooth stones again, and sometimes it took him a long time to find his way back to where he'd been. And that was different from just going there on his own for Schrodinger's video, because—

But he couldn't say why, really. Except maybe it was just better to jump than to be pushed, the way it was better to burn out than to fade away.

And that was something of the lake with the stony shore, too. One of the multitude of secret worlds there could show him the way out, but the deal with Galen and Joslin was also a way out, and a surer thing. Or so the Beater had convinced him, when the deal was done.

It may be better to burn out than to fade away, Mark, but It's best of
all not to do either. And you know you're burning out. Don't you?

Yes, I do, old pal, and how tactful of you to say so. I should have told
you when it happened that you had a hand in it as much as anything else,
maybe more. You put your ax away too soon, my man; when you closed
up your synthesizer for the final time, I heard the lid closing on my coffin
as well.

"Woo," he said, and blew out a short breath that might have been a laugh directed at himself. Then he stretched out facedown on the floor and got up again to walk carefully to the chair where his clothes were. And this time it was the right number of steps in the right way according to the music playing in his head. He dressed without any more problems.

The living room was tastefully luxurious, and empty. Over on a desk near the windows, a monitor was flashing his name. But he had to wait for a while, until the program director cued something up with a matching rhythm before he could go to it and press the message-waiting button on the control panel built into the desktop.

Thank you for your help in court,
the screen told him.
It was not abso
lutely vital in terms of legal procedure that you appear before the judge
with us, but it did strengthen our case beyond question. Hope you rested
comfortably. Press the printout button for a hardcopy map of the building
and the areas that directly concern you. The hallway to your left as you
face this screen leads to the elevator. Manny Rivera.

That was it? A Purge detox and not even a fancy French breakfast? What a bunch of cheap-asses.